Taking the difficulty out of financial difficulty

Nationwide, helping their customers take the power back after redundancy.

"Careercake’s content lends itself perfectly to the people-centric mission of building society, nationwide"

Nationwide needs no introduction. (But we’ll do it anyway because of the great work they do for their people and members).

As the world’s largest building society, they place communities at the heart of everything they do.

What’s incredibly awesome about this organisation, is their drive to do the right thing for their members. This is evident in their values which include putting members and their money first, as well as doing the right thing in the right way.

And they use Careercake as part of their offering to support their members. (Hurray!)

In fact, after using Careercake as part of their offering they went on to win Outstanding Conduct in Collections award at the Credit Awards (think of it like the Oscars of the credit industry). It’s a massive achievement to win this award as it’s a big acknowledgement from their peers, recognising their conduct and also shaping the way the industry treats its customers.

Here we talk to Gareth McNab who tells us about the value they get from Careercake.

Powering people-first businesses

Gareth is Money Advice Liaison Manager at Nationwide where his role is to influence best practice when it comes to supporting people in financial difficulty. He has led a number of initiatives for Nationwide which have been cited as examples of outstanding conduct in collections and support for customers in vulnerable circumstances.

So he really knows his stuff.

He’s also the person who champions the use of Careercake within Nationwide.

The aim: taking some of the difficulty out of financial difficulty.

‘Our leadership development cohort were challenged with finding a service proposition that would add value to our members, not just something that identified a potential challenge but rather something we could build into the delivery of our service’ says Gareth.

The use of Careercake was introduced to support members who contacted Nationwide's Triage team - a dedicated group of people who help those who may be approaching financial difficulty but haven’t yet missed a payment.

‘The idea being, if we can help you to find work then you may not go onto miss any payments; or, should you be receiving support relating to payments then perhaps this would be more likely to succeed’ says Gareth.

Careercake’s library of content and the themes it covers lends itself perfectly to this mission. It needed to complement the other services we offer and be something our agents could refer to with confidence

Providing the nationwide front-line team with additional support

Nationwide offers Careercake’s content to members in, or approaching, financial difficulty through job loss, potential job loss or redundancy who may not always need debt advice or benefits advice.

Their fantastic Triage team (trust us, we’ve met them and they are great people) are just some of the people who work hard to support their members.

‘The Triage team is pleased to have additional tools they can use to help members in or approaching financial difficulty that doesn’t result in amending accounts or impacting credit files’ says Gareth.

'We have plenty of things we can do to help those in difficulty, but for some people the financial difficulty, tighter budget, reduced payments, money worries etc are symptoms of an underlying problem – Careercake helps those members whose difficulty is related to employment address the cause of the problem rather than only address one of the symptoms'.

Just some of the results so far…

Nationwide has seen, and continues to experience, a series of positive results having used Careercake as part of its people-first initiative.

Around a quarter of members who watched our content were back in work or getting interviews within 3 months.

In addition the Triage team’s phone calls with members are more supportive, helpful in tone and action-focussed. Careercake content adds real value, resolving the short-term underlying cause of difficulty and allowing them to return to normal payments on a mid to longer term basis.

Oh, and not forgetting the the big award win at the Credit Awards of course.

Gareth says:

Members have always been receptive to the additional support we offer, and have been pleased and impressed to hear that we offer Careercake in this way

What’s next for Nationwide and Careercake?

They’ve completed a pilot with some great successes, and as they embed the service in areas of Nationwide relating to financial difficulty, they are looking at ways to explore other potential value adds within the Society and with other parties they work with.

‘We love working with nationwide and feel our two businesses are aligned. We share very similar values by ensuring people feel truly seen and heard’ says Aimee Bateman, Careercake CEO.

‘We've spent some time on-site with the team understanding how they use our content and hearing about the impact it has made on their members. It’s really humbling to see that our content has made a positive impact on people’s lives and that is the exact reason Careercake was created’.

Do you work for a business that offers (or wants to offer) awesome services to its members?

Sign up for a free demo of Careercake to see just how our content can help you to stand out and deliver true value.